Getting to know Intents and Intent Filters

Intents are messages that you can pass around between your app components. You can also send them to components in other apps. This enables you to create powerful applications where you can use other app’s components to perform tasks for you, such as playing music, sending email, and taking pictures.

Here are some of the things that you can do with intents:

Start activities

Start Services

Deliver broadcasts

The Android System also uses intents to signal changes such as low battery, incoming sms messages and phone calls. You can listen for these intent messages in your apps. You can also use intents to pass data.